on representation
May. 28th, 2010 02:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
harborshoreI was going to write a long and thoughtful entry on representation in fiction and how Gail Simone, for instance, gets it right, and I will still write that entry, but I hit a point where I'm a little too angry to write it.
The thing is, representation is an important issue in more ways than in fiction, and tonight on Swedish television in a segment on Hassa Helal, the Saudi poet, there was a blatant example of Doing It Wrong. Very unfortunate: it was on a talk show I quite like (it's about literature). Even more unfortunate: it's not like this is an isolated uniquely Swedish issue.
Standard disclaimers apply: I'm very capable of being wrong, and please tell me if you think I am.
Tonight I watched the Swedish television show Babel. It's normally a very good show, often thoughtful and funny and they feature authors like Sarah Waters. Smart people talking about good literature on TV! I am fond.
However.
Tonight they had a segment on Hassa Helal, a Saudi Woman who finished third in an enormous (and lucrative) poetry competition in Abu Dhabi and how the poem she wrote and read on live TV criticizing the fatwa has meant she is now living under death threats. I have tried to track down video of her reading her poems, but they're so far not turning up. The linked article has a partial translation.
At any rate, it was a decent program segment, apart from one (fairly important) factor: they never showed an entire reading of the poem from beginning to end, or even more than three stanzas at a time. This is pretty ridiculous: one can assume that watchers of a show about books can read subtitles without becoming bored.
In this case it also had the very unfortunate effect of silencing Helal--the segment was on how her poem had earned her death threats from the clergy, but we never got to hear the whole poem. And to make matters worse, the following discussion consisted of trying to take this issue to some sort of abstract level of talking about poetry in general--it was bizarre and infuriating. Political/protest poetry (as this must be categorized) is a very particular genre, and it comes off as positively stupid to talk about an author living under death threats as if she is working under conditions that resemble those a Swedish author work under. I just--I'm too angry to be coherent. It was awful.
To make matters even more problematic: the authors taking part in the discussion were all white. Which, when they were so naive and weird about what she was doing (missing the point entirely, you might say), was really hard to watch. I left the room halfway through when one of them said something like, "I just don't think poets care that much about political issues." Right. You've never had to.
And all of it just--look, we only allow certain voices authority, so of course all the people participating in the Discussion of Informed Commentary were white. Of course Helal wasn't allowed to read her whole poem, because--I can't even come up with the rationale for that one. I can't--yeah, coherency is escaping me.
I'm going to rewrite this into some sort of coherent non-emotional academic-sounding Swedish and email the program creators, yes I am.
But while I'm discussing representation, can we all agree to think about it more? In the realm of fiction as well as real life. Keep an eye on who is speaking, on who gets to be the avatar of the human experience in a work of literature or film, on who is given authority, who gets to explain, on who is cast as good (and many-layered), who is the funny helper, who is the villain. In your own writing and in the things you see and read.
Ours is not a world where voices are allowed equal weight, and quite frankly I'm beyond tired of having to walk around in a world where white straight dudes get to speak for me but I somehow get to speak for Kitty, because my white trumps her black even when we're both more or less queer women. None of it makes any sense; none of it is fair.
Watch the representation in your own creations (see if you can have a random doctor be a woman and a professor be a POC, and if you find yourself writing a story where the villain is the only POC character, perhaps think on it a bit), watch for it on the news, yell about it when you get the chance. And if someone can find a video of Hassa Helal reading her poem, please let me know, because I want to repost it here and email it around. She deserves to be heard again and again and again.
The thing is, representation is an important issue in more ways than in fiction, and tonight on Swedish television in a segment on Hassa Helal, the Saudi poet, there was a blatant example of Doing It Wrong. Very unfortunate: it was on a talk show I quite like (it's about literature). Even more unfortunate: it's not like this is an isolated uniquely Swedish issue.
Standard disclaimers apply: I'm very capable of being wrong, and please tell me if you think I am.
Tonight I watched the Swedish television show Babel. It's normally a very good show, often thoughtful and funny and they feature authors like Sarah Waters. Smart people talking about good literature on TV! I am fond.
However.
Tonight they had a segment on Hassa Helal, a Saudi Woman who finished third in an enormous (and lucrative) poetry competition in Abu Dhabi and how the poem she wrote and read on live TV criticizing the fatwa has meant she is now living under death threats. I have tried to track down video of her reading her poems, but they're so far not turning up. The linked article has a partial translation.
At any rate, it was a decent program segment, apart from one (fairly important) factor: they never showed an entire reading of the poem from beginning to end, or even more than three stanzas at a time. This is pretty ridiculous: one can assume that watchers of a show about books can read subtitles without becoming bored.
In this case it also had the very unfortunate effect of silencing Helal--the segment was on how her poem had earned her death threats from the clergy, but we never got to hear the whole poem. And to make matters worse, the following discussion consisted of trying to take this issue to some sort of abstract level of talking about poetry in general--it was bizarre and infuriating. Political/protest poetry (as this must be categorized) is a very particular genre, and it comes off as positively stupid to talk about an author living under death threats as if she is working under conditions that resemble those a Swedish author work under. I just--I'm too angry to be coherent. It was awful.
To make matters even more problematic: the authors taking part in the discussion were all white. Which, when they were so naive and weird about what she was doing (missing the point entirely, you might say), was really hard to watch. I left the room halfway through when one of them said something like, "I just don't think poets care that much about political issues." Right. You've never had to.
And all of it just--look, we only allow certain voices authority, so of course all the people participating in the Discussion of Informed Commentary were white. Of course Helal wasn't allowed to read her whole poem, because--I can't even come up with the rationale for that one. I can't--yeah, coherency is escaping me.
I'm going to rewrite this into some sort of coherent non-emotional academic-sounding Swedish and email the program creators, yes I am.
But while I'm discussing representation, can we all agree to think about it more? In the realm of fiction as well as real life. Keep an eye on who is speaking, on who gets to be the avatar of the human experience in a work of literature or film, on who is given authority, who gets to explain, on who is cast as good (and many-layered), who is the funny helper, who is the villain. In your own writing and in the things you see and read.
Ours is not a world where voices are allowed equal weight, and quite frankly I'm beyond tired of having to walk around in a world where white straight dudes get to speak for me but I somehow get to speak for Kitty, because my white trumps her black even when we're both more or less queer women. None of it makes any sense; none of it is fair.
Watch the representation in your own creations (see if you can have a random doctor be a woman and a professor be a POC, and if you find yourself writing a story where the villain is the only POC character, perhaps think on it a bit), watch for it on the news, yell about it when you get the chance. And if someone can find a video of Hassa Helal reading her poem, please let me know, because I want to repost it here and email it around. She deserves to be heard again and again and again.
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Date: 2010-05-28 08:51 am (UTC)